The real story of who is behind the Gordon Lightfoot is sort of like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. Each media outlet has a little bit of the puzzle, but there is still a bit of a mystery.

First, Facebook played an unseen role in this drama. The social networking site has become the go-to place for public grief, so it’s no surprise that it helped set off the first alarm bells about the “death.”  The source of the first digital mention? Ronnie Hawkins' wife, Wanda.

From Sean Michaels' article in the Guardian (emphasis mine):

This will have come as a relief to Ronnie Hawkins, the musician whose backing band became the Band. A friend of Lightfoot's, he was quoted in the early Canwest story, confirming the news. Hawkins said he had received a call from his management in Minneapolis, who had in turn received a call from Lightfoot's grandson, telling them the singer had died. "I don't know Gordon's grandson," Hawkins later told the Globe and Mail. "I didn't even know if Gordon has a grandson. I called my wife in Florida and told her, and I guess she faxed some of her friends and now, all of a sudden, it's all over the world. It's terrible. I can't even get hold of Gordon. Holy smoke, it's unbelievable." ... Hawkins suggested they trace the phone call to Minneapolis. "I think they can trace that phone call, maybe, and see who did that," he said. "I'm glad it is a sick joke, but it's bad."

Several sources have now confirmed that the prank call to Hawkins' management set the ball in motion, and this is when Wanda Hawkins took to the phone, fax machine, and Facebook.

This is where our Ottawa tweeter, @fleminksi, comes in. She knows a close friend of Wanda Hawkins. Our Ottawa tweeter's friend shared her grief on Facebook. The Ottawa tweeter in turn expresses her grief on Twitter and concurrently (and unrelated) CanWest is on the phone with Ronnie Hawkins--who no doubt believes his wife--and expresses his grief to the newspaper.

Meanwhile, this confirmation triggers an “alert” to go out across the CanWest newswire and CanWest reporters across Canada start tweeting it.

David Akin has some reflective and characteristically classy words about all of this on his blog.

And as Media Memo’s Peter Kafka says: Twitter didn't kill Gordon Lightfoot, Big Media did.

But say it is true. Twitter still didn’t force Canwest, the big Canadian media conglomerate, to publish a wire report that said the singer was dead. As best I can tell, it was that story, which was picked up by various Canwest newspaper sites, that convinced people that Lightfoot had croaked.

As Kafka says, this doesn’t suggest that CanWest is off the hook for not double or triple sourcing their facts. And, had an editor at CanWest News Service jumped onto the Twitter search, they too could have found--in well less than 30 minutes--that Lightfoot was alive.

Here is the point I think people should be very clear on: while the tweet from @fleminski came first, it certainly wasn’t what set off the nearly 3,000+ tweets in two hours. That is most certainly the fault of whoever pressed the “go” button on the CanWest wire alert.

All in all, only one person should be very happy about all of this: Gordon Lightfoot. His radio play hasn’t been this big in decades and he just successfully introduced himself to a generation of Canucks who thought he was already dead.

Update:  Some added information from a friend of the "Ottawa tweeter" at ThreeSeven.ca

However, it appears that the mainstream media jumped on it. Within half an hour of tweeting, Fleminski received a phone call from a reporter from CanWest (1. holy sleuth work, and 2. boundaries much, media?) asking for the source. She replied honestly: Ronnie Hawkins. The media then called Hawkins who confirmed the story. Believing they had a confirmed story, the media then ran with it.

As Jack Layton battles prostate cancer he will continue to have his strong hand on the rudder of the New Democratic Party of Canada.

I’ve traveled the country with Layton, his stamina and personal endurance lives up to the legend and far outpaced my own. His daily workout regiment is not a product of spin - it’s a real and important part of his life.

Layton is a strong athlete. And a strong political strategist. He realized early on that opposition without proposition is useless and that to keep up his brutal pace - he had to be strict about what he ate, how he exercised and having his medical team regularly check him over.

As a strategist he knows New Democrats are strongest as a team when presenting reasonable, costed and measured changes to public policy.

Make no mistake, Layton has been the New Democrats’ single strongest asset for the past seven years. He may, on the rare occasion, step into controversy, but overall the party could not have found a stronger steward. The bilingual leader spends real time working; mastering his French, stressing always that he wants to learn how regular people would speak the language. It’s perhaps why he sounds more forthright in French some days. But it also speaks to how much attention to detail he has as a leader.

Rightly, many in Ottawa have been recently pointing to just how often Layton has been proven right in the long run. The war in Afghanistan, pensions for Canadian workers and the need to reform the auto industry stick out as three major issues where Layton’s pragmatic and affordable solutions were out ahead of the other political parties.

Layton is first out of the gate with solutions to issues.

Renegotiating an entire federal budget as he did in 2006 was no small feat. The way Layton and his finance critic Thomas Mulcair, have been able to push around the Finance Minister is unprecedented: on everything from ATM fees to bank fairness, the NDP calls for solutions have at least been responded to by the government. More than the Liberals can say.

Layton has taken the New Democrats from a side show in the House of Commons to the single largest influencer of public policy in Canada. Conservatives make the policy, Opposition Liberals oppose it and all the while Layton’s New Democrats tinker, change and massage bills to fit a social democratic ideal - or as close as it’s going to get.

As leader of one of the traditionally most unruly groups of Parliamentarians, Layton also performs extremely admirably. Deftly balancing the rural and urban split, the left and right divide and regional disparities. He leans on party elders to help chart his course; knowing it’s harder for the party to disagree with many of its’ luminaries at once.

The groundbreaking work with Greenpeace, the Canadian Autoworkers and New Democrats could have saved thousands of jobs in Southern Ontario. His first book could easily form the back bone for a proper public policy initiative to end homelessness and his second book highlights local solutions for climate change.

Some in official Ottawa may speculate that Layton’s illness may accelerate the pace of leadership preparations in the various camps eyeing the top job. They are right; but don’t expect a Liberal-leadership-race-style bloodbath of crossfire and spin in the media. Social democrats just don’t politic that way. We have too much respect for the people we elect to play those games.

The leader of our party has turned the New Democrats into a political force. And nothing - not even a bout with cancer - is going to dissuade Layton from his ultimate goal of seeing New Democrats govern the country.

The True North Media House is an Olympic project worth watching. As you learn in this short clip the group is neither pro or anti Olympic - but acts as resource, collaboration vehicle and social space for “self accredited” reporters. This webisode is one part of a larger storyline a Vancouver documentary film maker is weaving about the Olympics, social media and society.

For more on the documentary visit the official site. And, if you are in Vancouver during the Olympics and have a desire to contribute to a larger media project - visit the True North Media House and sign up.

A vibrant and energetic crowd filled Parliament Hill today where Shawn caught up with the CBC's Kady O'Malley to get her take on the protest and what it's like live-blogging these types of events.

O'Malley on the prorogation protest from Shawn Dearn on Vimeo.

It’s been a busy day. When I wasn’t freezing and tweeting at the Ottawa protest, I was tracking the crowd-counts from across Canada. With 32 communities that I could find tweeted reports on; I estimate that over 25,000 people rallied against the Prime Minister's decision to prorogue parliament. I’ve uploaded and embedded below a PDF with the community totals and my methodology. I'm hoping to continue to add to the list, please comment if you have numbers from cities not listed (or if you have a correction.) Update: as of Sunday at 8:00 am I have added 7 more communities; including New York City and St. Johns. I'm still looking for smaller communities to report. About twenty listed events could push it to over 30,000. Again, please comment with corrections or more information.

Estimated Crowd Attendance for #CAPP Rallies

To provide a visual look at today’s Ottawa protest, this is Gregory Pang’s shots of the demonstration today from Flickr.

And lastly, a quick look at the instant popularity of the #noprorogue hash tag on Twitter.

Joanna Smith was one of the first Canadian reporters to travel to Haiti after the devastation. Her compelling, graphic and raw accounts of the aftermath of the devastation of the earthquake are regularly featured on the Toronto Star’s front page. I'm very grateful she she took a few minutes to answer a few questions about reporting from Haiti.

Smith’s usual stomping grounds are the scrums of Parliament Hill, as she explains in this interview the decision to go to Haiti “came so quickly...I had not even really had the chance to see the images on television until I had already agreed to go and I was preparing for the trip.”

New communications tools have played a big part in her sharing and reporting her experiences on the ground. Her active and regular use of Twitter has steadily been gainly Smith attention and positive word-of-mouth online; she was followed by about 700 people pre-Haiti and now 2200. While Haitian wireless service is spotty and she cannot regularly see her readers comments via Twitter she says contacts have emailed her about the massive response, she also weights in on two quiet debates in media circles about ethics of disaster reporting.

Traveling with her is photographer Lucas Olenluk and Smith's parliamentary co-worker Allan Woods joined the team, riding along with a Canadian military aide flight.

Interview with Joanna Smith of the Toronto Star

Q: You have reported on deeply moving, emotional, brutal and hopeful moments in Haiti. How does the scene reconcile with the way you prepared yourself in your own mind as you made the trip to the ravaged areas; I suppose I'm asking - until you are there on the ground, can you even image how vast the destruction is?

Joanna Smith: It was nearly impossible for me to prepare mentally for the level of destruction before I got here, just as it remains extremely difficult to accurately convey what I am seeing in words.

The decision to send me here came so quickly. I knew there had been a devastating earthquake, but I had not even really had the chance to see the images on television until I had already agreed to go and I was preparing for the trip.

On the flight down I kept thinking: “This is going to be like Hurricane Katrina.” I didn’t cover that event at all. I read about it in the newspaper, heard it on the radio and watched it on television like most of the world. It was only several days into my assignment that I realized this was far, far worse in many different ways. You get used to a thing.

On the ground, everything is so much more immediate, obviously. I’m here. It is so difficult to describe the stench and even harder to understand how one gets used to it. I’ve stopped wearing my face mask, stopped noticing it on my clothes and stopped stepping around the garbage and just walking through it.

It feels surreal, as cliché a term as that may be when it comes to describing a disaster zone. I often feel detached, or as if I am on the set of a movie or in a wax museum. It is a very strange feeling to realize that you are seeing the things you are seeing and not breaking down into tears or getting sick. It’s a strange sensation to feel fine here, but something I am at the same time grateful for.

Q: You have been actively using Twitter to relay messages back home and around the world. You won't be surprised to find many of us are glued to your status updates. Two questions. First, Does this help ease your families anxiety about you being in a disaster area?

JS: Absolutely. My friends and family tell me they are checking my updates constantly just to make sure that I am safe and sound. My dad has joined Twitter. He sent me an email asking if I could see his “tweets” and put the word in quotation marks like that. It was adorable. He is following just one person and it is me. He was terrified when he heard about the aftershock. I did not respond to his concerned email right away, so he logged onto Twitter and said he exhaled deeply when he saw that I was safe. The father of my colleague, Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk, has also joined Twitter to follow my updates. The other day he sent Lucas a text message suggesting we go to Canadian Tire because I had tweeted about our truck getting a flat tire after rolling over a shard of glass or anything else that was lying in the street. I managed a short telephone call to my husband the other night when there was a period of good reception and he already knew everything I was up to that day. It’s been a great way to stay in touch.

And second , how are you finding getting instant/near-instant feedback from readers?

JS: I am actually unable to see the @ replies very often. When I have seen them, my reactions have been mixed.

First, It was surprising to see how many people were interested in my work. I joined Twitter about seven or eight months ago and have already found it an incredible reporting tool, but have not seen the kind of response I have seen in Haiti. Covering H1N1 and live-tweeting parliamentary committees is a different thing, obviously. I began tweeting from Miami and Santo Domingo to keep myself busy, honestly. Then I had no email reception after we crossed the border into Haiti and so, out of necessity, filed an entire story via Twitter and just kept it up throughout the first day. I had absolutely no idea the level of response I was getting back home until friends started emailing me about it. Now I guess it has become my thing while I am here and I am happy to contribute to covering this story in that way. The 140-character limit brings an immediacy to the reporting. It forces you to forego flowery adjectives in favour of simple language: verbs and nouns. I find that style of writing is leaking into the stories I file to the newspaper as well and I see that as an improvement in my writing. I can tell that readers are responding well to that and it is nice to hear from them.

Second, it can be frustrating when followers mistake me for a relief worker, take tweets out of context or expect far more from me than I can possibly provide. I find that whenever I tweet the name of a location, followers ask me to help search for people at a nearby location. I can do no such thing. I am just a journalist writing about what I see. I know there has also been a large number of people asking me and other media to spend more time at the Hotel Montana and asking for more details about what I have seen there.  People need to understand there is little I can do to help. Rescue teams are there full-time. Embassies are in charge of identifying bodies and contacting their families. I cannot do that. I am not a search-and-rescue team and I do not have the level of access to databases and other clues that embassies have to be able to identify someone. I could be wrong and really hurt a family needlessly. For example, I found a suitcase with business cards from a U.S. doctor. I refrained from tweeting the name. I found out days later she had already been rescued. I understand how frustrating a lack of information can be, but I cannot be an authoritative source of information when it comes to things like finding missing loved ones.

Q: There have been ongoing debates - albeit quiet - about the number of journalists in Haiti from Western nations and then the semantics/connotations around the words looting, scavenging and collecting food for the hungry. Will you weigh in on these briefly from your perspective?

JS: The first part of your question is a debate that I have not witnessed here in Haiti, although that is not to say it is not happening. Every Haitian I have spoken to has been glad the media is here to tell the story. They wish I was an aid worker who could bring them a bottle of water of course, but failing that they are gracious about my role as someone who is here to tell their story and hold the Canadian government and the international community to account. I am sure Haitians in Port-au-Prince would rather we were here than not here and their opinions are the only ones I really care about right now. The world can talk again about this point once the media, including myself, begin pulling out of Haiti.

As for looting vs. scavenging, this is a debate I have addressed, albeit briefly, with readers via Twitter. There is something about being on the ground here that makes all debates like that seem academic and a little ridiculous. I do not mean to be condescending. I have participated in such debates many times throughout my own life and I no doubt will continue to do so. Just consider this: the Haitians have not had such debates. They call it “pillage” and they still manage to see the nuance in the word. Just because it is looting does not mean it is wrong in these circumstances. At the same time, what about the person who runs up to the person who just “looted” or “scavenged” from an abandoned storefront and takes whatever they “looted” or “scavenged” away with the threat of violence, or actual violence? Is that “looting” or “scavenging” or “stealing”? Is that person any more or less desperate than the person who took it from the abandoned storefront? Are they more or less justified in their actions? Context is everything. Unfortunately, the 140-character limit on Twitter does not allow for much of it, so I have warned readers that I will likely use “looting” in that forum, whereas I will think more carefully about it for the newspaper version. I might have called the 15-year-old girl who was shot dead by police a looter at one point, but the harsher criticism should undoubtedly be reserved for the one, or the system behind that one, who fired the gun.

Here is an embed of Joanna Smith's most recent tweets. And, take a moment to donate to the Humanitarian Coalition or the Red Cross - they are going a great job on the ground.

Photo credits United National Development Agency; who have placed their images under Creative Commons. Bravo!

The byline Jan Wong makes some wince a little. And likely, an equal number dive eagerly into everything she writes. And, for better or worse she inspired a whole new generation of journalists this past weekend.

Very few others practice her "How far do you go to get a story? As far as it takes" style-of-journalism and none since Mordecai Richler with the ability to rouse such strong reactions in people.

Wong gave an emotional keynote at the Canadian University Press national conference this past Friday night. This is a roundup of the best reporting I could find about her speech.

The Innovation in College Media blog provides the basic structure of the keynote speech - including all ten of Wong’s rules “for getting the story” with their comprehensive written notes here: “Her talk was about 10 rules for getting the story, but she also talked about her battle with depression. It was a powerful presentation…”

Ashleigh Mattern provides a good overview of Wong’s career in the official CUP conference newsletter. But, I found it strange that the CUP conference newsletter report on the speech had no mention of the news Wong had handed them. So here it is:

Jan Wong, it seems recently freed of any restrictions on speaking about matters surrounding her departure of the Globe, confided in the large group of student journalists that she was fired while on leave for depression.  Here is how some in the audience reported the Wong keynote via Twitter:

And here is an embed of the aggregate opinion/tweets of folks talk about Jan Wong on the conference hash tag #nash72:

And, a final reflection on the Wong speech from student journalist and blogger Karen Ho from her post “High on hope (and other legal things)”

“I can still fight for a place in the world’s media landscape. Jan Wong and Ing Wong-Ward’s presence were especially helpful in showing me how other Chinese-Canadian women journalists can be incredibly successful while at the same time kicking down expectations and escaping from the cultural expectations of our parents.”

Photo credit from Andrew Louis, (@hyfen on Twitter) who also blogged his amusing observations about my hometown, Edmonton.

The National Post has welcomed with open arms a public broadcaster and former marquee Globe & Mail columnist apparently smarting from being pushed out of his coveted Saturday spot.

Rex Murphy’s official debut in the Post was today. It looks like it was a foray into the right-leaning opinion pages that finally landed him in hot water with the new Globe management. The Cross Country Checkup host - and long-time CBC host and pundit - penned an A-section screed for the Financial Post, December 5th, on climate change.

Why isn’t Rex Murphy with the Globe?

It seems the article was only what “got the ball rolling” in the words of one insider. Less than commentary in a rival paper; several sources have suggested Globe and Mail Editor in Chief John Stackhouse was simply unimpressed with the increasingly esoteric opinions of this elder-statesman of Canadian opinion. One example widely cited is this CBC appearance (subsequently praised by Terrance Corcoran of the Post.)

So, “climate change denial” is widely rumored to have been the last straw. Perhaps sensing the loquacious Newfoundlander would prompt unneeded bad PR if sacked; I'm told Stackhouse offered to move him to Mondays. As evidenced by the quick decampment to the National Post, it seems that went over like a tonne of bricks with Murphy.

The move was announced this past Thursday by Peter Mansbridge on CBC’s the National, where Murphy still resides as one of the few opinion columnists left on television.

Editor of the Vancouver alternative weekly the Georgia Straight, Charlie Smith is pleased with the move.

“I don't know if Murphy jumped or if he was pushed by Stackhouse. Regardless, I'm looking forward to picking up a Saturday Globe and Mail without one of Murphy's typically ill-informed attacks on climate-change scientists.”

Well it looks as if the answer is: Rex Murphy was pushed a little and jumped.

Photo credit; Rex then & Rex now [CBC]

It all started innocently enough.

Your friend has joined a group “Canadians Against the Prorogation of Parliament.”

One-by-one my friends on Facebook were joining the group.

Soon enough an avalanche of media attention (the CBC National and the Toronto Star front page specifically) had contributed to over 60,000 Canadians signing up by this morning.

Yesterday saw another avalanche: of opinions on political blogs (and twitter) about the Star article, the CBC piece and “impact” of this Facebook group about the efficacy of online activism overall. This post is my attempt at bring at capturing some of the ideas and highlight a few interesting contributions to the debate surrounding “social media activism.”

The Opinions

In classic National Post style the editorial, titled “The Toronto Star and the Interweb” they mock.

Of course, the National Post isn’t alone in thinking the Canadians Against Prorogation of Parliament is just online hot air. Maclean’s columnist Andrew Coyne wrote:

“Certainly there’s no evidence the public is up in arms about it, notwithstanding the Star’s typically tendentious headline. Smug Tory types whose response to every principled objection is “nobody cares” are, unfortunately, right: the 35,000 plus who have subscribed to that facebook page are indicative of very little: most, I would bet, are opposition partisans. Were their situations reversed, they would be saying the same things the Tories are. I wish it were otherwise, but that is what politics has become in this country.”

And, as to be expected even Conservatives who understand online actions like blogger Stephen Taylor spent much of yesterday reminding people on his blog and Twitter that:

“...the anti-coalition Facebook group soared to over 125,000 in a week. To be fair, this week has been slow while last year’s coalition story was the busiest week we’ve had in Ottawa in years and there were many other non-Facebook stories to report!”

A side note; Aaron Wherry of Maclean’s cleverly replied;

“@stephen_taylor So if this one gets to 127,000 members will you accept its legitimacy?”

http://twitter.com/aaronwherry/status/7414083435

While I obviously don’t agree with all of the points these mainly Conservative voices raise. Similar notes of caution are being sounded by more moderate voices as well.

For instance, yesterday AM as the Twitter conversation heated up; Joe Boughner - well-known social media smartie in Ottawa -  was quick to get a blog post out explaining his views on situation that was unfolding.

“While the growth of this group in such a short time is impressive, I’m kind of left wondering what’s next. As my brilliant wife noted on Twitter, maybe the fact that the group itself is a story makes this a success. In the biz that’d be considered earned media, the ultimate goal of any outreach strategy.

But, as I’ve blogged before, how much traction does a protest have when it’s so easy to be part of it? Is joining the group the end of the action taken by those 25k? What percentage of them will actually take the next step and write to their MP or attend a rally?”

National columnist Paul Wells put forward his post “Money (or action?) where your mouth is” and referenced Joe’s post; he made the interesting point that if the hoard joining Facebook groups donated even a little money to the Liberals or New Democrats - say even half of them - this might be worth something.

Ryerson University professor and political pundit Greg Elmer suggests an entirely different approach and tactics, “a selective boycott”, as he explains:

“Much of the banter has debated the merits of joining groups as a form of political action or public opinion. I would suggest, however, that a much more meaningful protest (apart from collecting $ to fund events and campaigns against such acts and politicians) would be to “de-friend” or otherwise remove oneself en masse from existing pages on Facebook.

The must read post on this subject belongs to Jesse Hirsh, freelance CBC technology correspondent and long-time tech user and thinker.  He suggests:

“A crisis like this presents an opportunity to expand the democratic process and include more people in politics as a whole. However, it's hard not to snicker at the fact that joining a Facebook group to show opposition to something has become the ultimate cliche. While such a group does raise awareness and cross over into mainstream media with front page headlines, I am not alone in wondering whether it actually accomplishes anything.”

The reason I like Jesse is that he gives actionable advice. In particular he talks about how the framing of the prorogation is playing into the perception of democracy in Canada and how comedy should be employed.

As Hirsh points out;

“The key is to avoid the media's perpetual attempt to frame these political actions as protest, and instead transcend all boundaries until the power to set the agenda is achieved. At that point you are no longer protesting, but much closer to governing.”

Jesse is pleading with people to take the action off the social networking site Facebook and speak out not in protest or opposition - but from a place of knowledge and contribute to the debate. He writes:

“From all sorts of voices saying all sorts of things, that together unite into a single message, that we are the people, we will not go away, and we demand a government by the people for the people.”

Media fundamentals at play here:

1. Media is self-perpetuating: that is to say that with every story on the National; every front page of the Toronto Star the creators of the group will be exposed to more journalists - naturally making them sought out for interviews; the group will continue to grow
2. Media likes to measure things. Some think numbers and polls are notoriously misinterpreted and oddly reported. Get a few people in a room with a pile of polling data and watch how readings of the information come out. So it’s no wonder that there would be debate on what social media metrics mean to public policy/political reporting.
3. Media need to report. Nothing is going to make the Prime Minister recall Parliament; but in the mean time reporters on Parliament Hill need to report on something - and in the early stages of there being little Parlaimentary activty - it’s natural to look for opposition. They found it on Facebook. where will they find it next?

What does this mean for people who want to take Jesse’s advice? Well, the above fundamentals clearly signal a Parliamentary Press Gallery willing to give people an opportunity for people who oppose prorogation to create, collaborate and demonstrate why this undemocratic move by Harper should be remembered during the next election.

But, as Jesse points out: we do not need to do this from a position of protest in the traditional way. We can’t yell and scream Parliament back open, but we can reason and argue Harper out of his job.

My contribution

So, what is my contribution to all this going to be? I’m not entirely sure just yet but I'm going to engage in some open-source research on the role of online activism, Facebook and social networks. I don't think we are anywhere near fully understanding how Facebook groups (and more broadly online activism) fit into the Canadian political context. I do believe that people need an entry to the political process. Four in every ten Canadians are non voters. So, if your sister asking you to join a group opposing prorogation leads a non-voter to vote, or the disengaged to re-engage - isn’t that worth something?

In the next few days I’m going to start this research project into the question of political activity on Facebook - I’m happily taking contributors, co-researchers and partner to help me look at the questions and reality of “Slacktivism vs. First Step to Action.”

So, what do you think? Please leave a comment - or if you have a contribution to make to the project let me know.

Many people have been asking for us to put on a group session at a price most non-profits can afford - I aim to please so, I'm really excited to announce this session Media Skills Training for Progressive Canadians.

This workshop is the most hands-on, interactive and cost-effective way to ensure your team understands the fundamentals of media relations. Created for progressive organizations and groups - this training provides real-world tools for action. Only 15 spots are available, it takes place at the Code Factory, downtown Ottawa on January 27th at 9:30 am - 1pm.

Our half-day Progressive Media Skill Training teaches:

• Major media terminology so you can speak the media's language
• Tactics for incorporating earned-media into daily business routines
• Interview skills including techniques and templates for creating your media message
• Prep skills for media interviews in TV, print, radio or online
• Online communications and how to work with your collaborators online and through social media
• Learn measurement and its importance to public relations and media skills development.

Participants will leave the training with planning templates, strategies and tactics to pitch your ideas to the media.

Please note: this session is for unions, progressive non-profifts and New Democrat MP/MPP staff

Two incidents have official Ottawa buzzing about "social media" and the far reaching implications of these new communications tools:

First, the Yes Men pulled off a complex stunt aimed at confusing the Canadian delegation - it worked by leveraging common internet behavior and trust of major media; much of the media focus has been on the hoax itself - thereby drawing attention to Canada’s laggard status on climate solutions. It worked so well, the Prime Ministers press secretary Dmitri Soudas pounced on the wrong environmentalist and made himself look like a fool.

Second, a photoshop contest over at Liberal.ca has gone awry. As Taber and O’Malley report the official opposition site posting a manipulated image of the PM getting shot, well this simply made the Liberals look like fools.

Neither of these stories are really about social media - oh, sure they have aspects where social media/internet communications helped along the story - these stories are really about unforced staff errors. The worst kind of political staffing mistake.

Soudas made an unforced error in screaming at a well known activist. And, the Liberals made an unforced error by failing to see that assassination isn’t funny. Apologies all around and move on folks: social media isn’t the problem. Foolish behavior is.